Does your dog dig it?

I just came from visiting with a family whose dog decided to take a paw at landscaping design.

The dog was thrilled with the results; the owner not so much.

As I explained to them, unfortunately for us digging comes naturally to dogs. It is part of their ancient wiring that frankly as all natural behaviors, does poorly with our “requests” to stop digging and much better with management.

Most of us do not spend time with our dogs outdoors so that we are able to redirect when they get into mischief, from our perspective and engaging in natural habits from their perspective.

Teaching your dog where you want him to eliminate, areas to avoid such as flower beds and the like will go a long way before he decides what goes on in your piece of heaven.  How many of us take the time to inspect our fencing for possible sensible areas of escape, for example?

So, the expectation then is for our dog to understand exactly what he can and cannot do in the backyard.

There is also another aspect of how our dog’s brain is wired that does not help us much with this situation. Thus, we need to help our dog in order to help ourselves.

You see, dogs are not good generalizers.  Meaning that they do not understand that the rules that apply when you are present also apply when you are gone. When you are present with them in the backyard you are most likely re-directing your dog to “appropriate back yard etiquette.” If you are not, well please do not blame the dog when he begins to dig, makes holes at the fence line or chews your expensive pool furniture.

Ah!  Talking about pools.  Most dogs will NOT, I repeat, will not be able to jump out of your pool. Unless once again, you have taken the time to teach your dog how to use the steps to get out.  So please you need to treat the safety of your dog around the pool as you would with a small child.

Some of the strategies that I discussed with my clients are meant to give them some immediate relief.

First off, if your dog digs your flower beds begin with putting an actual barrier that is not offensive to you and effective in keeping your dog out.  Once that is in place, we need to find a way to satiated the dog’s instinct for digging.  So here is my solution for my client and for you.

Build your lovely dog a handsome digging area that he cannot resist.  You can go all fancy with having someone build your dog a sandbox or you can go low tech and buy a kiddy pool.  Either way, the idea is for the container to be large enough for your dog to get in.  Fill with enough sand that you can hide your dog’s daily chow (if it is dry kibble) so that he has to hunt for each morsel of food while exercising his given right of digging.  If you do not feed dry food to your dog (first off, congratulations are in order!)  you can hide tasty treats in there and even chew bones for your dog to go find.

For added benefit go outside and document your dog’s amazing capacity to find by sniffing, pawing and the like the last morsel of food. Make your own entertainment.  Do keep in mind that for this to work you must first remove the possibility of your dog digging where he began to dig- your flower beds.

Lastly, make it a habit of spending time with your dog outside so that you can teach him what is acceptable and what is not.  If you spend time playing with your dog most likely your dog will begin to associate the place where the activity takes place with you as the place where fetch takes place and have less of an inclination for mischief and decoration.

Now, if you tell me that your dog is being destructive because it spends oodles amount of time outside because you are gone all day… well then you have bigger fish to fry.  We cannot truly and fairly expect our dogs to not behave for such long periods of time without us providing acceptable outlets.

Backyard Dogs

Dogs are incredible social beings that thrive as companion animals. Isolation for this reason is very hard on most dogs and as such a welfare issue for the dog.

Isolation is hard on dogs at all stages, but is extremely difficult on young puppies. We can for sure make the lives of “outside dogs” more interesting by training them, exercising them and feeding them in interesting and challenging ways to relieve them of constant boredom. However, in spite of the mental and physical enrichment we supply for them, these cannot make up for the time that they spend alone in social isolation if they spend most of their days & nights on their own.

Beside the isolation issue referred to in above paragraph, when young puppies (or untrained dogs) are kept mainly as outside dogs, it is quite likely that they will not be house trained nor comfortable around household noises and other related activities, and thus create havoc on their confidence and overall comfort when brought inside (for some reason) or traveling with them. In the case of young puppies (3-18 weeks of age) this incredibly rich period of learning is when we must work hard in order for them to feel comfortable and secure in a people’s world. The only way to achieve this is by intense positive association with novel things and people. Once the puppy is over the socialization period, whatever he was not exposed to in a positive manner will be a potential for concern, or worse, fear for the rest of his life. A dog that lives outside will miss out on learning about living in the proximity of people.

In addition, a dog that has not learned to be inside a home when young, in all likelihood would not be a good candidate for traveling. Not only will he be outside his known environment – the home yard, but he will most likely be in distress because of the demands put on him when in an inside environment- one that he does not know at all.

Another big concern for dogs that are left outside – even in the best of set-ups are:

1. Constant exposure to the elements: heat, cold and thunderstorms. Ongoing exposure to outside elements can create distress in all dogs but remarkably so in young dogs or the elderly.

2. Some dogs will develop noise phobias. Phobias can be very debilitating for the rest of the dog’s life and his family. Studies suggest that working breeds (herding dogs, for example) are at a higher risk of developing a noise/thunder phobia.

In some cases, the fact that the dog is alone most of the time may give way to nuisance behaviors such as constant barking or howling, attempts to escape and digging, etc. Once the dog engages in these nuisance and stress or boredom related behaviors, the chances of the dog remaining in the home will decline as complaints from neighbors make the current situation unsustainable.

Some people might find that they want to have a dog as a pet or that they love the one they have, and for some reason the dog cannot live inside; say in the case of someone in the household developing allergies or a landlord that has changed his or her mind, etc. However, while some dogs might fare better than most in such circumstances, backyard dogs rarely get their needs met.

One solution that I find might help both parties is to consider having the dog live with someone else that can give the dog the attention, and can have the dog truly be part of the family. While the current owner can most definitively come around and take on the full responsibilities and the joys of having a dog be a part of his or her life without having to relegate the dog to a life of neglect and loneliness.

If we truly consider our pets to be “family” we must treat them as such. So as a dog pro, and an advocate of dogs, I want folks to go the extra mile and to think creatively and valor so that their pet does not suffer the consequences of the choices we make.

Dog Training Need or Luxury?

I just came from a Behavior & Animal Training conference where the trainers, who work with a myriad of different species, gave us a lot of food for thought. One of my favorite presenters, Ken Ramirez - head trainer at the Shed aquarium in Chicago, spoke of among other topics,  the need to train our animals. So it got me thinking…. is training our dogs a need or a luxury?

Our animals are always learning, not only during formal training sessions. What they learn can help them have a much better quality of life or the opposite - make their lives a living hell. What then are the advantages of training? And who benefits from it?

Training teaches dogs to live in our care. It also addresses their safety and welfare. Welfare can be defined as the health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group. When it comes to our dogs, welfare includes the following:

1. Access to a health program (veterinarian care).
2. Good nutrition.
3. A “rich” living environment – including a social structure (the other animals they share their lives with and their relationships with them).
4. Friendly social interactions with conspecific and people.
5. Proper shelter such as comfortable temperature and sleeping/resting arrangements.
6. Mental and physical enrichment.
7. Management that provides for a safe environment.

Besides including adequate (depending on breed and the individual dog) physical and mental stimulation for our dogs, training also facilitates cooperative behaviors. For example, we should teach our dogs to be comfortable with our touch when being examined, to accept (and being comfortable with) equipment such as collars, leashes, harnesses, etc. that makes our walking with them easier, confinement such as crate training. And the list goes on.

There are, of course, other secondary reasons for the training of dogs such as the work animals are required to engage in as assistant animals and for entertainment purposes.

I guess living with our dogs and their care is like anything else in life: you get out what you put into it. It never ceases to amaze me how well dogs do living in a world that is kind half their own. Half their own because of domestication but not their own because they are subjected on a regular basis to our needs and whims – not theirs.

Now, if instead of often curtailing their natural behaviors (digging, chewing, barking, chasing, marking of territory, etc.) we find viable ways - via education and training that allow for their needs to be met in an acceptable way to us, (the concept of “compromise” comes to mind) we can rest assure that not only will we enjoy their company much more but at the same time we are providing for a being in our care. In essence, I am strongly advocating for a relationship and lifestyle that makes our dogs equal partners in our relationship. And as a result, they will thrive and continue to provide us with a lifetime of companionship and fun.